This Day in History

2005 Air France Flight 358 en route from Paris, France, to Toronto, Canada, crashed at Pearson Airport in Toronto. All passengers and the crew survived.

1998 Beginning of the Second Congo War (sometimes referred to as the African World War or the Great African War). The war ended in July 2003, when the Transitional Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo took power.

1990 Iraq launched the invasion to Kuwait by bombing is capital, Kuwait City, thus beginning the Gulf War. The war ended in February 1991.

1985 Delta Air Lines Flight 191 en route from Florida to Los Angeles, USA, crashed at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. 136 of 152 passengers and 11 members of crew died.

1980 The Central Station at Bologna, Italy, was attacked by a terrorist. The terrorist detonated a bomb, killing 85 people and wounding more than 200.

1978 Died: Antony Noghès, French businessman, best known as a founder of the Monaco Grand Prix, one of the most important and prestigious automobile races in the world.

1977 Born: Edward Furlong, American actor and singer, who rose to prominence after performance in Terminator 2: Judgment day (as John Connor). He also starred in American Heart, A Home of Our Own, American History X.

1976 Died: Fritz Lang, Austrian-American director, producer, and screenwriter, most famous for films that include the groundbreaking Metropolis and M, that he had made before he moved to the United States.

1973 Died: Jean-Pierre Melville, French actor, director, producer, and screenwriter, a prominent person of the French Resistance during World War II. Produced in 2008 documentary Code Name Melville reveals the importance of Jean-Pierre Melville’s personal experience in the French Resistance.

1951 Born: Joe Lynn Turner, American singer-songwriter and guitarist, known for works with numerous hard rock bands, Rainbow, Fandango, Deep Purple, Mother’s Army, Hughes Turner Project. Currently he is the vocalist for Rated X group.

1947 A British South American Airways Avro Lancastrian airliner crashed into a mountain during a flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina to Santiago, Chile. The wreckage would not be found for over 50 years.

1941 Born: Jules A. Hoffmann, Luxembourg-born French biologist and academic. In 2010 he shared Nobel Prize with American immunologist and geneticist Bruce Beutler for their discoveries concerning the activation of innate immunity.

1939 Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd wrote a letter to President of the USA Franklin D. Roosevelt, urging him to begin the Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear weapon.

1934 Died: Paul von Hindenburg, German field marshal and politician, the 2nd President of Germany. After his death presidency in Germany was abolished and Adolf Hitler became Führer of the state.

1932 Born: Lamar Hunt, American sportsman and businessman. He promoted soccer, basketball, tennis, ice hockey and American football in the USA and became the principal founder of the American Football League and World Championship Tennis.

1932 Born: Peter O’Toole, British-Irish actor of stage and film. He rose to fame playing T. E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia (the role brought him an Academy Award nomination). He is also known for roles in films Goodbye, Mr. Chips, The Lion in Winter, Becket, The Stunt Man, My Favorite Year.

1923 Died: Warren G. Harding, American journalist and politician, 29th President of the United States, who served in office from March, 1921 till his death. His presidency featured many scandals, earning him bottom-tier ranking from historians.

1923 Born: Shimon Peres, Polish-born Israeli politician, the 9th President of Israel, serving in office from 2007 till retirement in 2014. His political work was awarded with Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 for the peace talks that he participated in as Israeli Foreign Minister, producing the Oslo Accords.

1922 Died: Alexander Graham Bell, Scottish-Canadian engineer, inventor and innovator. His best known invention is telephone, that he patented in 1876.

1922 A powerful and disastrous typhoon hit Shantou, Republic of China. More than 50,000 people were killed, making it one of the deadliest known typhoons in history.

1921 Died: Enrico Caruso, Italian tenor. He sang to great acclaim in major opera houses of Europe and the USA. From 1902 to 1920 he made 290 commercially released recordings, that are still available today as digital downloads.

1905 Born: Myrna Loy, American actress and singer. She rose to fame after playing the role of Nora Charles in The Thin Man (1934). Although she’s never been nominated for a competitive Academy Award, she received an Honorary Academy Award in recognition of her extraordinary qualities in screen and off.

1892 Born: Jack Warner, Canadian-born American production manager and producer, one of the co-founders of Warner Bros. in 1903. After foundation of company he became its president and driving force.

1870 The world’s first underground tube railway, Tower Subway, opened in London. The tunnel was closed in 1898 and todays it’s used for water mains.

1834 Born: Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, French sculptor, best known for designing the Statue of Liberty, that is situated in New York.

1820 Born: John Tyndall, Irish-English physicist and mountaineer, who is widely known for his study of diamagnetism. He also made discoveries concerning realms of infrared radiation and properties of air.

1810 Died: Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier, French inventor. Together with his brother Joseph-Michel he invented hot air balloon. They also succeeded in launching the first manned ascent, carrying Étienne into the sky.

1788 Died: Thomas Gainsborough, English landscape and portrait painter, noted for his technique and speed, that he applied paint. His most famous works are Portrait of Mrs. Graham, Mary and Margaret: The Painter’s Daughters, The Morning Walk, and Cottage Girl with Dog and Pitcher.

1644 Died: Bernardo Strozzi, Italian painter of Baroque era. He is known for many paintings, that were influenced by Franciscan teachings. His best known works are Saint Christopher, The Piper, Saint Lawrence distributing Alms.

1610 Henry Hudson sailed present-day Hudson Bay, thinking he had made it through the Northwest Passage and reached the Pacific Ocean.

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2007 Died: Ingmar Bergman, Swedish director, producer, and screenwriter, one of the most accomplished and influential auteurs of all time. He is most famous for films The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, Persona, Cries and Whispers, Fanny and Alexander.

2007 Died: Michelangelo Antonioni, Italian director and screenwriter, best remembered for trilogy on modernity and its discontents L’Avventura, La Notte and L’Eclisse. He received numerous awards and nominations, including the Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize, Palme d’Or, Golden Lion, FIPRESCI Prize, Pietro Bianchi Award, the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists Silver Ribbon, and an Academy Award.

1992 Died: Joe Shuster, Canadian-American illustrator, best known as co-creator of the DC Comics character Superman. Together with Jerry Siegel, they published Superman for the first time in 1938.

1978 Okinawa Prefecture in Japan changed its traffic on the right-hand side of the road to the left-hand side.

1971 An All Nippon Airways Boeing 727 and a Japanese Air Force F-86 collided over Morioka, Iwate, Japan. 162 people were killed.

1970 Born: Christopher Nolan: English-American director, producer, and screenwriter, creator of several commercially successful films of the early 21st century (Batman Begins, The Prestige, The Dark Knight).

1965 Died: Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, Japanese author, one of the major Japanese writers of modern Japanese literature. His stories are frequently narrated in the context of search for cultural identity in which constructions of the West and Japanese tradition are confronted.

1963 Born: Lisa Kudrow, American actress, screenwriter, and producer, best known for role as Phoebe Buffay on the televisions series Friends. This role brought her an Emmy Award and two Screen Actors Guild Awards.

1961 Born: Laurence Fishburne, American actor and producer, best remembered for role as Morpheus in Matrix. He became the first African-American to portray Othello in a motion picture. This role brought him wide recognition.

1956 Born: Delta Burke, American actress, singer, and producer, best known for role as Suzanne Sugarbaker in the CBS comedy series Designing Women. After fallout of Designing Women Burke never gained to rise to prominence.

1947 Born: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Austrian-American bodybuilder, actor, and politician, the 38th Governor of California. He rose to fame as a Hollywood action film icon, starring in Conan the Barbarian, The Terminator, Predator and other films.

1945 Born: Patrick Modiano, French author and screenwriter. His works were translated into more than 30 languages. Although his works are very popular in France, only a few were in circulation in Britain, where he was awarded with the Nobel Prize.

1945 USS Indianapolis was sunk by Japanese submarine I-58 during World War II. 883 seamen were killed.

1932 Flowers and Trees, first Walt Disney’s cartoon short to use Technicolor. This work became the first cartoon short to win Academy Award.

1930 Died: Joan Gamper, Swiss-Spanish footballer and businessman, known as the founder of several Football Clubs, most notably FC Basel, FC Zürich and FC Barcelona.

1930 The first FIFA World Cup was hosted in Uruguay. The Cup was won by Uruguayan football team.

1912 Died: Emperor Meiji, the 122nd Emperor of Japan, reigning the country from 1867 till his death. During his reign Japan quickly rose from a feudal state to a capitalist and imperial world power, that was caused by Japan’s industrial revolution.

1898 Died: Otto von Bismarck, prominent German politician. In 1871 he founded the German Empire and declared himself the Chancellor.

1865 The steamboat Brother Jonathan sank off the coast of Crescent City, California. 225 passengers were killed. During the last voyage the vessel was loaded with crates of gold, that was valued at $50 million in today’s dollars.

1863 Born: Henry Ford, American industrialist, founder of the Ford Motor Company. He didn’t invent the automobile of the assembly line, but he made automobiles, that many middle class Americans could afford.

1863 Representatives of the United States and tribal leaders including Chief Pocatello (of the Shoshone) signed the Treaty of Box Elder. The treaty called for peaceable relations between the two groups and contained a promise by the U.S to pay the Shoshone $5,000 yearly as compensation for the utter destitution inflicted by war.

1818 Born: Emily Brontë, English author and poet, the third eldest of four surviving Brontë siblings. She is best known for her only novel Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature.

1811 Died: Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, Mexican priest and soldier, leader of the Mexican War of Independence. He was executed by a firing squad at Chihuahua.

1718 Died: William Penn, English businessman and philosopher, one of the key figures in the history of British colonies in the present-day USA. He founded the Province of Pennsylvania and the future Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

1683 Died: Maria Theresa of Spain, the first wife of King Louis XIV. She is famous for her virtue and piety. She is often viewed as an object of pity in historical accounts, since she had to tolerate many illicit love affairs of her husband.

1656 Swedish forces under the command of King Charles X Gustav defeated the forces of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth at the Battle of Warsaw.

1629 A powerful earthquake in Naples, Italy caused death of about 10,000 people.

1419 First Defenestration of Prague: a crowd of radical Hussites killed seven members of the Prague city council.

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2005 Astronomers announced discovery of the dwarf planet Eris. Eris is the most massive dwarf planet known in the Solar System and the ninth most massive body known to orbit the Sun. Its estimated to be about 1/3 of the Earth’s mass.

1998 Died: Jerome Robbins, American director, producer, and choreographer, primarily known for his Broadway Theater and Ballet/Dance. His most notable works were One the Town, Peter Pan, Bells Are Ringing and West Side Story.

1994 Died: Dorothy Hodgkin, Egyptian-English biochemist and biophysicist, Nobel Prize laureate for discovery of structure of vitamin B12. Among her other most influential discoveries was the conformation of structure of penicillin.

1987 Prime Minister of Great Britain Margaret Thatcher and President of France François Mitterrand signed an agreement on building a tunnel under the English Channel.

1981 Born: Fernando Alonso, Spanish Formula One racing driver and a double World Champion and Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF.

1981 The wedding ceremony of Charles, Prince of Wales, and Lady Diana Spencer at St Paul’s Cathedral in London was worldwide broadcast. Audience of over 700 million people around the world watched the ceremony.

1980 After the end of the Islamic Revolution Iran adopted its new “holy” flag, that is still used today.

1979 Died: Herbert Marcuse, German sociologist and philosopher, often associated with Frankfurt School of critical theory. His most notable works were Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory, Eros and Civilization, One-Dimensional Man.

1973 Born: Wanya Morris, American singer, best known as a member of the R&B group Boyz II Men

1973 A constitutional referendum on abolishment of monarchy was held in Greece. The proposal was approved by 78.6% of voters, initiating the first period of Metapolitefsi, the transitional period from dictatorship to legislative election and democratic republic.

1967 The city of Caracas, Venezuela, was stricken by an earthquake during celebration of its 400th anniversary of foundation. Approximately 500 died.

1958 U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law the National Aeronautics and Space Act, thus creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

1948 After 12 years of hiatus caused by World War II, the first Summer Olympic Games (the Games of the XIV Olympiad) were held in London.

1937 Born: Daniel McFadden, American economist and academic, Nobel Prize Laureate for development of theory and methods for analyzing discrete choice.

1925 Born: Mikis Theodorakis, Greek composer, author of more than 1,000 songs. He wrote music to films Zobra the Greek, Z and Serpico. His is also wrote music for Syrtaki dance, the most popular non-traditional dance in Greece.

1921 Adolf Hitler became the leader of the National Socialist German Working Party. This party became the ruling party in Germany and was disbanded after the end of World War II.

1913 Died: Tobias Asser, Dutch lawyer and jurist, Nobel Peace Prize laureate for his role in the formation of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the first Hague peace conference in 1899.

1905 Born: Clara Bow, American actress, star of silent films era, sex symbol of the 1920s. the role in film It (1927) brought her global fame and the nickname The It Girl.

1900 Died: Umberto I, King of Italy from January, 1878 till his death. During the reign of Umberto I Italy saw a great expansion, gaining territories of Eritrea and Somalia. He was deeply hated by anarchists and killed by one of them.

1900 Born: Eyvind Johnson, Swedish author, member of Swedish Academy and Nobel Prize laureate for a narrative art, far-seeing in lands and ages, in the service of freedom.

1898 Born: Isidor Isaac Rabi, Polish-born American physicist and academic. In 1944 he received Nobel Prize award for discovery of nuclear magnetic resonance. His another achievement, is development of magnetron, that is used in microwave radar and microwave ovens.

1895 Died: Floriano Peixoto, Brazilian general and politician, the 2nd President of Brazil. He came to presidency during a difficult period in the history of the country. Despite his unpopularity, he was responsible for the consolidation of the new Republican Government.

1890 Died: Vincent van Gogh, Dutch painter of Post-Impressionist period. He completed many best-known paintings, among them Vase with Twelve Sunflowers, The Starry Night and Self-portrait with bandaged ear.

1888 Born: Vladimir Zworykin, Russian-American engineer, known for invention of iconoscope, the first fully electronic system, that replaced earlier cameras. He also played a significant role in development of charge storage-type tubes, infrared image tubes and the electron microscope.

1885 Born: Theda Bara, American actress of silent film era. She was one of the most popular actresses and sex symbol. Her roles of femme fatale earned her a nickname The Vamp. Most of films, that she made, were lost in 1937 in fire, that outbroke in the Fox vault.

1883 Born: Benito Mussolini, Italian journalist and politician, leader of the National Fascist Party and Prime Minister of Italy from 1922 to 1943. Mussolini was one of the key figures in the creation of fascism.

1856 Died: Robert Schumann, German composer and critic, widely regarded to be one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era.

1773 Guatemala was stricken by an earthquake magnitude 7.5, numerous aftershocks lasted till December. About 600 people died during the earthquake, many more died during the next months due to starvation and diseases.

1507 Died: Martin Behaim, German-Bohemian geographer and astronomer, nowadays best remembered for Erdapfel, the word’s oldest surviving globe, that he produced for the Imperial City on Nuremberg.

1099 Died: Pope Urban II, best known for initiating the First Crusade and setting up the modern-day Roman Curia in the manner of a royal ecclesiastical court to help run the Church.

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2011 Died: Margaret Olley, Australian painter, the subject of more than 90 solo exhibitions. Before her death she donated 130 of her own works to the Art Gallery of New South Wales worth $7 million.

2005 Over 5,000 people died in floods in Mumbai, India. The flood was caused by heavy rain, that continued for two days. That rain was the eighth heaviest ever recorded rainfall.

2004 Died: William A. Mitchell, American food chemist. During the time of work for General Foods Corporation he invented Pop Rocks, sugar candies, that create fizzy reaction when dissolve in saliva, Jell-O, Cool Whip and powdered egg whites.

1983 Czech athlete Jarmila Kratochvílová set a world record for the 800 meter, running the distance at a time of 1:53:28. Her record is still not broken.

1973 Born: Kate Beckinsale, English actress. She made a break-out in 2001 with starring roles in the war film Pearl Harbor and Serendipity. She also starred in The Aviator, Click, Van Helsing, Underworld: Evolution etc.

1971 Apollo 15 was launched from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39 in Florida, USA. The mission is known to be the first mission to use the Lunar Roving Vehicle.

1971 Nicolette Milnes-Walker became the first woman to successfully complete single-handedly non-stop sailing across the Atlantic Ocean.

1968 Born: Frédéric Diefenthal, French actor and director, best known for role as Émilien in French Taxi series.

1964 Born: Sandra Bullock, American actress and producer, one of the Hollywood’s highest-paid actresses, winner of one Academy Award and one Golden Globe Award. She played in number of successful films: Miss Congeniality and its sequel, The Lake House, Premonition etc.

1963 The world’s first geosynchronous satellite Syncom 2 was launched from Cape Canaveral on a Delta B booster.

1959 Born: Kevin Spacey, American actor, singer, and producer, winner of several Golden Globe Awards, Academy Awards and BAFTAs. He is remembered for roles in films Seven, The Usual Suspects, American Beauty.

1952 Died: Eva Perón, Argentinian actress and politician, First Lady of Argentina from 1946 to 1952. She became a part of international popular culture, most famously as the subject of the musical Evita.

1952 King of Egypt Farouk abdicated the throne in favor of his son Fuad, who was at that time only 7-month old. Fuad II of Egypt ruled the country only for one year, from 1952 to 1953.

1945 The Potsdam Declaration was signed in Potsdam, Germany. The declaration called for the surrender of all Japanese armed forces. According to the declaration, if the Empire of Japan didn’t surrender, it would face total destruction.

1943 Born: Mick Jagger, English singer-songwriter, producer, and actor, best known as the lead singer and founder member of The Rolling Stones.

1942 Died: Roberto Arlt, Argentinian author and playwright. Many of his works were filmed and translated to English, Italian, German, Portuguese and other languages. Back in Argentina Arlt influenced on works of the next generation of artists.

1928 Born: Stanley Kubrick, American director, producer, screenwriter, and cinematographer, regarded as one of the greatest and most influential directors of all time. Most of his films were nominated for Golden Globes, BAFTAs and Oscars. He is best known for films Lolita, A Clockwork Orange and Paths of Glory.

1928 Born: Joe Jackson, American talent manager, known to be the father of the Jackson family, family of entertainers, that includes music superstars Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson.

1926 Died: Robert Todd Lincoln, American lawyer and politician, the only son of President Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln, who lived to adulthood. He served as the 35th United States Secretary of War from 1881 to 1885.

1925 Died: Antonio Ascari, Italian race car driver, Grand Prix motor racing champion. Ascari was a promising racer, but he was killed in an accident during French Grand Prix.

1919 Died: Edward Poynter, English painter and illustrator, President of the Royal Academy. He is best known for historical paintings as Israel in Egypt, St George for England, Visit of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon.

1875 Born: Carl Jung, Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist, the founder of analytical psychology. His work much influenced on psychiatry, philosophy, anthropology, archeology, literature, and religious studies.

1867 Died: Otto, Bavarian prince, the first modern King of Greece. He was crowned in 1832 and ruled the country till 1862, when he was deposed.

1861 The end of the First Battle of Bull Run during American Civil War: the Union Army was defeated and George B. McClellan assumed command of the Army of the Potomac.

1856 Born: George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright and critic. Although he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was in drama. He was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925 for his significant contributions to literature.

1829 Born: Auguste Marie François Beernaert, Belgian politician, the 14th Prime Minister of Belgium. One of his greatest achievements of lifetime was Nobel Peace Prize award fro his work at the Permanent Court of Arbitration.

1745 The first recorded women’s cricket match took place near the city of Guildford, England.

1684 Died: Elena Cornaro Piscopia, Italian mathematician and philosopher, known as the first woman to receive a doctoral degree from a university.

This Day in History

2010 One of the largest leaks in military history of the USA: WikiLeaks published classified documents about the War in Afghanistan. Most of the documents were classified secret.

2008 Died: Tracy Hall, American chemist and academic, the first person who grew a synthetic diamond according to a reproductive, verifiable and witnessed process, using a press of his own design.

2003 Died: John Schlesinger, English-American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter, winner of Academy Award for Best Director. He is best known for films Midnight Cowboy, Darling and Sunday Bloody Sunday.

1994 Israel and Jordan signed the Washington Declaration, that formally ended the state of war, existing between two nations since 1948.

1985 Born: James Lafferty, American actor and producer, best known for portrayal of Nathan Scott on the CW TV series One Tree Hill.

1984 Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to perform a space walk. She is the second woman in space, after another Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova.

1978 Born: Louise Brown, English woman, known as the first human who was born after conception by in vitro fertilization.

1976 Spacecraft Viking 1 took the photo of Cydonia, a region on Mars. The photo of Cydonia attracted scientific and popular interest due to an appearance of a humanoid face on the surface. This image is now known as the Face of Mars.

1967 Born: Matt LeBlanc, American actor and producer, best remembered for role on NBC sitcom Friends, where he played Joey Tribbiani.

1966 Died: Frank O’Hara, American poet and critic, a prominent person in New York City’s art world. He is regarded as the leading figure in the New York School, an informal group of artists, musicians and writers, who drew inspiration from jazz, abstract expressionism, surrealism, action painting and avant-garde art movements.

1956 The Italian ocean liner SS Andrea Doria collided with the MS Stockholm, Portuguese cruise ship, in heavy fog 45 miles south of Nantucket Island. The liner sank the next day, 51 died.

1955 Born: Iman Mohamed Abdulmajid, professionally known as Iman, Somalian-English model and actress. She pioneered use of ethnic cosmetics and noted for her charitable work. Iman is wife of David Bowie.

1946 An atomic bomb was detonated underwater in the lagoon of Bikini Atoll. This explosion was one of the series of explosions codenamed Operation Crossroads, aimed at investigation of the effect of nuclear weapons on warships.

1934 Born: Claude Zidi, French director and screenwriter, known for his burlesque comedies. He is best known for film My New Partner, that brought him two César Awards for Best Film and Best Director.

1920 Born: Rosalind Franklin, English biophysicist, chemist, and academic. She is remembered for her critical contributions to the understanding of the fine molecular structures of DNA, viruses, coal and graphite. Her work on DNA achieved the most profound impact.

1909 French inventor Louis Blériot became the first person to fly across the English Channel in a heavier-than-air machine from Calais to Dover. The trip took 37 minutes.

1905 Born: Elias Canetti, Bulgarian-Swiss author and playwright. He was awarded with Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981 for writings marked by a broad outlook, a wealth of ideas and artistic power.

1894 Born: Gavrilo Princip, Bosnian assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was a pretext for Austria-Hungary’s invasion of Serbia, that later led to World War I.

1866 Died: Floride Calhoun, American wife of John C. Calhoun, prominent American politician John C. Calhoun. She was involved in a social scandal, known as the Petticoat affair, which damaged already-strained relations between Vice President Calhoun and President Andrew Jackson.

1865 Died: James Barry, English soldier and surgeon. After his death it turned out, that Barry was a woman, whose name was Margaret Ann Bulkley.

1844 Born: Davidson Black, Canadian paleoanthropologist. He is best known for heading the excavations, that found the remnants of early humans named Sinanthropus pekinensis (now Homo erectus pekinensis).

1844 Born: Thomas Eakins, American painter, sculptor, and photographer, widely acknowledged to be one of the most important artists in American art history.

1843 Died: Charles Macintosh, Scottish chemist and engineer, inventor of waterproof fabrics. The Mackintosh raincoat is named after him.

1842 Died: Dominique Jean Larrey, French physician and surgeon, remembered today for innovations in battlefield medicine. He modified and improved the organization of field hospitals, creating the forerunner of the modern MASH units.

1837 William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone successfully demonstrated the first commercial use of an electric telegraph between Euston and Camden Town in London.

1834 Died: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English philosopher, poet, and critic, the founder of the Romantic Movement in England and member of the Lake Poets.

1794 Died: André Chénier, Greek-French poet, victim of the French Revolution, accused for crimes against the state. His sensual, emotive poetry marked him as one of the precursors of the Romantic movement.

1790 Died: Johann Bernhard Basedow, German educator and reformer, the founder of the Philanthropinum, the short-lived but very influential progressive school in Dessau. He is known for reformation of schools, common methods of instruction and establishment of an institute for qualifying teachers.

1603 James VI of Scotland was crowned king of England, thus bringing the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland into personal union. Political union would be achieved only a century later.

1593 Henry IV of France publicly converted from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism. In 1589 he gave religious liberties to Protestants, thereby ending the Wars of Religion.